It is common to provide a sample of an image to a customer for approval prior to printing a large number of copies of an image using a high volume output device such as a printing press to print the image on a high volume paper or printing stock. The sample image is known as a “proof”. The proof is used to ensure that the consumer is satisfied with, among other things, one or more colors in the image.
It is not, however, cost effective to print the proof using high volume output devices of the type used to print large quantities of the image. This is because it is expensive to set up high volume output devices to print the image. Accordingly, it has become a practice in the printing industry to use digital color printers to print proofs. Digital color printers render color prints of images that have been encoded in the form of digital data. This data includes code values indicating the colors to be printed in the image and the amount of colorant to be used. When the color printer generates a printed output of an image, it is intended that the image recorded on the printed output will contain the exact colors called for by the code values in the digitally encoded data.
Accordingly, digital color printers have been developed that can be adjusted so that they can mimic the performance of high volume output devices. Such adjustable color printers are known in the industry as “proofers”. Proofers generally employ a different printing technology from that used by the high volume printer. Associated with this, the media on which the proof is executed is correspondingly different from the media that the high volume output device employs. More specifically, the texture of the two types of media can differ significantly, the high volume media usually being of the lesser technical quality and exhibiting more texture.
Since the texture of the high volume media affects the behavior of ink deposited upon it by the high volume output device, and since the different colorants employed in a typical multi color volume print can have different liquid and colorant properties, they may differ in their behavior on the high volume printing stock. This implies that the texture of the high volume media directly affects the color behavior and produces a discernable mottling effect which has a distinct associated color variation aspect.
The challenge is to suitably modify the proofing process to allow for the image mottling effect of the high volume media and, in particular, to allow for the color mottling that happens as a result of the different behavior of the different colorants.